The overlooked costs of research travel and illustrations

Research for the book involved archives at Tyne and Wear, Woolwich, Greenwich, Chatham, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Yeovilton, Falmouth, Cambridge, and the National Archives at Kew. Each visit brings costs for transport, accommodation, food, equipment, and time away from paid work. Booking a train well in advance can make first-class travel only slightly more expensive while including food, a power socket, and a usable place to work. For longer stays, a midweek hotel package may offer better value than a budget room when it includes meals, secure equipment storage, parking, and suitable working space. Publication rights for historical photographs can also be expensive, while cover artists and professional indexers need paying for their labour. Outsourcing the index was a disability-related quality-control choice because anxiety about a missed entry would make self-indexing disproportionately costly. These expenses explain why a polished illustrated history is not cost-free to produce.